Atom

Atom is an alternate XML format for easily sharing content, much like RSS Really Simple Syndication (format). Blogs on http://www.blogger.com/ for example, publish Atom feeds. Atom and RSS have very similar uses; the motivation behind Atom sprang from a desire to add improvements to the RSS specification. Apparently the keeper of the RSS specification froze the spec (declaring that RSS 2.0 would be the last version)and so the authors of Atom felt that a new format was necessary.